80 Quotes by Herman Hesse

Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.

Once he said to her: 'You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it.

The river is everywhere.

The child proud of learning its alphabet will soon master reading a verse or a saying, and then its first little story, and its first fairy tale, and while those who are not destined to be readers soon content themselves to practicing their ability to read on the news and financial sections of their newspapers, the select few remain forever bewitched by the strange miracle of letters and the words (each of which was once a charm, a magic formula).

Le nace a uno cierta melodía, la canta uno silenciosamente, en el interior solamente; toda la naturaleza individual se posesiona de la tonada y se deja uno llevar por ella por su fuerza y emotividad, y lo notable es que mientras se adueña de uno se olvida lo fortuito, lo banal y lo burdo, nos armoniza con el universo y nos da fuerzas y alas contra nuestra torpeza y depresiones.

Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself....His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness.

Aun cuando mi destino externo se haya desenvuelto como sucede para todos, inevitablemente y según lo decretado por los dioses, mi vida íntima es obra propiamente mía, con sus gozos y amarguras, y soy yo, en lo personal, el responsable de la misma.

But even the best and most noble principles cannot make a person a more worthy individual than he truly is. I don't judge people by the views they hold but by their character.